# Keep the mailing list focused on Gene Wolfe *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Aug 1997* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Dan Rabin *20 Aug 1997, 15:44* I for one would prefer that the Urth mailing list remain focused on Gene Wolfe's work. That's what I subscribe for. Since I'm an infrequent contributor, perhaps I should back up my vote with a proposal for a new Wolfe-centered discussion topic: Wolfe's craft in the small. We are greatly struck by the quality of Wolfe's ideas and by the way he uses them to great effect. What about the small-scale details of *how* he tells his stories? I have in mind, for example, two occasions in _The Book of the New Sun_ on which Severian ends a situation with decisive violence. First, in _Torturer_ at the end of Ch. 14 `Terminus Est', Severian's crushing of the nerve in the peltast's neck is preceded by the reflective commentary `The peltast was relaxed, so there was no great difficulty.' The presence of the word `relaxed' contributes to the calming effect. Then--KER-POW--action! Second, in _Sword_, at the end of Ch. 26 `The Eyes of the World', we have a reversal in the sequence of action and reflection. This time the occurrence of the violence in the paragraph `I struck then,' interrupts Typhon's arrogant attempt to swear Severian to his service. OK, so he struck, but what happened? The following paragraph, beginning `There is a way of smashing the nose with the heel of one's hand...' forms a nice little disquisition on how Severian killed Typhon, revealing that Severian must have been carrying out the outlined reasoning during the preceding dialog with Typhon without telling us. KER-POW!, and then `Elementary, Watson, I simply deduced that to kill a two-headed human you must exploit a reflex that can only protect one head.' Does anybody else have a favorite example of Wolfe's technique at the sentence-and-paragraph level? By the way, the flinch reflex seems to be a bit of a favorite with Wolfe. Hammerstone uses it as an example explaining `standing orders' to Silk on p. 223 (hardcover) of _Lake of the Long Sun_ (near the beginning of Ch. 9 `In Dreams Like Death'). -- Dan Rabin ---